What's in Civ4. Just the facts, ma'am.

[Max Sinister]

I think civ2 graphics were an improval compared to civ1, and isometric tiles are ok too, but civ3 wasn't that much better - the colors are ugly, and the graphics slow down the game...

[SpencerH]

I have a "wait and see" attitude. At this time, I'm not willing to buy CIV4 "sight unseen". On the other hand, I'm not "turning my nose up" to a new CIV game from Firaxis either.

[Addled Platypus]

can the new 3d terrain be done by an editor like in C3?,
or will we have to have them do it

[Max Sinister]

I think it's too early to say that. I certainly hope we can do it in an editor - OTOH, even with Civ3 it's difficult to make new graphics if you don't want that they look crappy compared to the original ones, if you aren't an artist (I myself couldn't, for example).

[Shogun Gunner]

With the modding community in Civ2, Civ3 and certainly present in cIV, there's a lot of different terrain mods available. Some of those graphics really signficiantly change the look of the game.

Nieesuh comes to mind with his terrain improvement graphic packs. The farms are so much better than the standard irrigation graphic in Civ3.

So, I'm not concerned with the graphics look and color choices vanilla out of the box in cIV.

[Locutus]

For good order: OP updated with the info that the Gamebryo engine will be used.

[Toby Rowe]

I too wish to see if Fireaxis can do better [than] before I buy Civ 4. If there are modders for Civ 4, then Fireaxis hasn't mucked it up, and it is the last chance the Civ series has I think, before it goes the way of Sim City: consigned to history as a fantastic concept, but ruined by ego of the programmers who think they can do better than the "taken as given" rules Civ/Sim City/Colonisation set as a framework. All were logical, the basic rules needed tweaking, (not the game as processors became more powerful) IMHO.

One thing, does anyone know of a strategy gaming magazine in the English speaking world?

We had a magazine called PC Strategy player in the UK, the owners of PC Gamer brought it, then closed it down about 3 issues later (ie: They brought out the competition in order to kill it, even though PC Stategy Gamer didn't even begin to impinge on the PC Gamer market).

Is there a magazine that serves this gap in the gaming world? (Strategy/Sim/RPG).

(PC Gamer likes MMORP-whatever it's called, games for instance, as they seem to be all 18 and can play each other in the office, whilst getting paid, and also only slags off a company if it is tiny and doesn't buy 30% of all advertising space in the magazine per issue, so all Sony games are wonderful etc.

Toby ;_) (end of moan!!)

Edit; I did actually used be a subscriber of PC Gamer for about 8 years until they brought the magazine, which I discovered within a few issues of PC Gamer buying and then closing it.

This blatent act of stupidity made me laugh- it was like having a choice of shoe polish- You buy black for one pair, brown for another, I wanted and owned both, they lost a customer of 8 years by the illogical thinking the company had in competion terms- It showed how little the company understood the market.

Anyone want to start a real "Gathering of developers", or "gathering of Gamers"? (I'll do the Admin.....)

[Locutus]

Opening post updated to include the info from the Game Informer magazine preview (see news item).

[Nikolai]

19 civs? That makes 20 with the barbs I guess. Not bad, although not fantastic either. I am a bit worried of how they plan to implement religion, the little info so far on that gives little knowledge, but I certainly don't hope it will be just a happiness factor. I really hope they'll implement it like in the old List ideas, then I'd be very happy!

[Elias]

I would like to mention somthing about the civ 4 screen shots in game informer. look closly at the untis, they are all grouped together on the same tile multiple units. look at the city with the 4 units all around it. this could mean that they are bringing back a ctp unit style, or perhaps a limit to the number of units on each space(because you can only fit so many graphics on a single terrain), or maby you can just see all the units on a single space so you wont have to scroll down the endless list over and over. well either way I want to know what it is tell me now !

[Locutus]

The prevalent theory, from my opening post:

Based on those same screenshots, it also seems that Civ4 will use multi-unit graphics to represent the units in the game, as e.g. Rise of Nations does as well.

So you're really only seeing 1 unit, as in every other Civ-like game...

[Capt Dizle]

Just put some wargame in there. I don't know why that concept is so hard for them to get.

Build more units with variable abilities. Ambushes. Recon in Force. Take the concept of that extra shot you could get from a zone of control from certain units. Beef it up. Give a unit with two moves the ability to be set on auto attack all or auto attack specified or auto retreat. The advancing forces comes within range and maybe they get mauled because they led with their best troops without sending in skirmishers to tell the enemy dispositions. Include partial results, retreating damaged units, so much could be done.

Real air and sea warfare could be put in this game.

And so on....

[Solver]

The RTS-like interface sounds like something good might actually come out of the whole "more appeal to mainstream" thing. Not that I found any previous interfaces hard, but some RTS games got a great one.

So far, however, we know nothing of one thing - complexity. The majority here wants the game complex, more complex then Civ3, but Firaxis taking the "appeal to mainstream" policy may lose the complexity. Then again, they may do perfectly well with it. Europa Universalis can probably be considered a mainstream-appealing game, yet it's very complex.

[Brent]

The pics don't look substantially better to me than the old ones. The units, at least.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Solver
Europa Universalis can probably be considered a mainstream-appealing game, yet it's very complex.

Not really, EU is a niche game as well. A particularly successful niche game, but a niche game nonetheless. Last I heard EU sold a few hunderd thousand copies, which is pretty damn good considering the game, but dwarfs in comparison to the millions of copies that are sold of games like Civilization, Age of Empires, Counterstrike or whatever...

If you want complexity, Civ is the wrong place to look. Civ1, 2 and 3 didn't offer huge strategic depth either, at least not compared to other TBS(eque) games like the CtP series, EU, GalCiv, Slitherine games, etc. If you're looking for a new complex TBS game, I'd recommend checking out Ages of Man, Legion II or GalCiv II instead...

Personally, what I want/expect from Civilization IV is gameplay which is (a) sufficiently different from Civ3 (or rather Civ2, as I barely played Civ3 myself) while still being a Civ game, (b) free of tedious micromanagement and (c) FUN! A game need not be complex to be fun. I still enjoy playing Dungeon Keeper, ST:Birth of the Federation and Lemmings, and those don't exactly offer the zenith of complex gameplay. Added complexity in Civ4 would be a great bonus of course, but I'm not holding my breath on it. As long as it doesn't loose too much of the existing (lack of) complexity...